"The theory behind that is because the effect is even more immediate than under the first version of 'No Jab, No Pay' we are going to have even better results in terms of moving up towards this critical population immunisation rate of 95 percent," he said.

"We are up around 93.7 percent, 90.8 percent for the critical age groups.

"Before this policy we were seeing immunisation rates drop below 90 percent and that was causing a resurgence of diseases like polio and whopping cough that we had essentially eradicated but faced a resurgence of."

The Government says immunisation rates among indigenous children have increased significantly since the policy was introduced.

"One fascinating result and very positive result is that for indigenous kids at the five-year- old mark they have actually gone over that 95 percent, and now rates of immunisation for five-year-old indigenous kids are higher than they are for non-indigenous kids," Mr Porter said.

Legislation for the changes will be introduced into parliament today and if passed will begin from July 1.